Chords: Mr Blue Sky by ELO
This song means an awful lot to me, for a lot of reasons. Come get you the chords for Mr Blue Sky, one of the absolute best songs by one of my favourite bands, Electric Light Orchestra.
If you’re just here for the chords, you might want to skip to below the video., because this is going a to be a long post about my Dad’s passing…
ELO is a my Dad band. There weren’t many My Dad bands, and there wasn’t a great deal that my Dad and I both liked, given how difficult and conflicted our relationship was. I’ll gloss over a lot of what I just wrote and then deleted, to say that he wasn’t a very nice man to me a lot of the time.
Five years ago today, I whispered forgiveness in his ear, and watched him breathe his last, with his hand rather unexpectedly in mind. The long screen wipe steadily to ever softer snores, fading to flatlines, then into the silent stillness of a house when nobody’s home. And all while the machines scream to tell you that the corporeal chemistry has stopped, as if you could miss the fact.
I was unprepared for what his death would bring. I didn’t expect it to hurt as much as it did. Some small part of me will stagnate, frayed and threadbare forever more. A greater part of me will defy, evolving and interating through the cascades of life’s moments.
I've always loved this song, ever since I was tiny, and it was one of the few things he and I always bonded over. It was the exit song at his funeral, where I mustered some heartfelt but spun words for my third of the eulogy, and while it's not my best work, he never truly earned my best. I said the words you’re expected to say when people die.
"Our Dad had a big, booming laugh that would light up a room. A striking figure, unforgettable once met, our Dad made friends easily, and when I was young, seemed to know everyone and everything.
He had an easy grace and confidence which belied a tender side. He was fiercely intelligent, opinionated, perfectionist, idiosyncratic, irreplacable. A character who went to extremes, a dreamer with an elegant knack for storytelling. He was in his element when making something.
Dad was an idealist, and while our ideals didn't always mesh, he fostered in us a spirit of good and right. He loved deeply, felt deeply, and looked after those he cared about. His profession as a home security specialist was informed, I'm sure, by his unwavering belief that you should protect the things that you adore. Especially if you've fashioned those things with your hands and words, as he had.
When leaving the house, he would blow onto the window and draw little pictures for us. Even though the vapour has long faded, the imagery of our Dad remains forever, burned into memory, never to be forgotten or defaced.
Dad had wicked taste in music; his happy tapping always comes to mind when I'm freaking out to my favourite music. But one of my fondest memories of him was his evident delight at sharing the evening free-flight of the NATS with us. The lights on the model aeroplanes like magic in the sky, shouts of 'HEADS!' to avoid a faceful of low-flying aircraft, and Camp coffee to warm up. He'd drive us home in the dark humming to the radio, satisfied after a day sharing his passion with us.
Regardless of the situation, when we needed him, the sheer force of Dad was always bigger than the problem at hand. Comforting in its lack of subtlety, he'd go to the ends of the Earth for you, and you always knew he would make it all right. And now it's up to us to take the lessons he taught us, the ways he's touched our lives - to go forward, and to be bigger than the problems that face us. Thanks Dad."
I’ll keep the other side of the truth to myself.
I recently finished BoJack Horseman, and found great comfort in the eulogy episode when (SPOILERS) his mother passes. When you lose someone you didn’t have a great relationship with, one of the things that hurts most is that you’ll never get to rewrite the story that was written between you. What you have now is how it ends. That’s it. And it’s tragic, and terrible, and there are no words, ever again.
So, given all of the above, you’ll understand that I find Mr Blue Sky quite difficult to sing. Especially this part:
Mr Blue, you did it right,
But soon comes Mr Night,
Reaching over, now his hand is on your shoulder,
Never mind, I’ll rememember you this,
I’ll remember you this way.
It takes me a good while to desensitise myself to it enough that I can enjoy playing it, like I should. If I haven’t played it for a while, it gets me right at that moment. And yet, like some kind of asshole with something to prove, I did this song at an open mic night. I got through the whole thing while having the tail end of a panic attack, and nobody was any the wiser. But I know it wasn’t my best. And I’m always trying to be just that.
Now, today, years after his death, though I can still hear the flatline machine screaming, I quiet that noise by reclaiming this song. I don’t think there could be any more fitting tribute.
Here’s my Imperfection Project cover:
While I chose a stripped down and simpler rhythm for me, and cut the whole end section instrumental, I think we can all agree that I nailed it. :D
(And yes, that’s a blue vinyl copy of Out of the Blue, the album this song is from, randomly spinning in the background. Because why not?)
If you’d like to play this song yourself, here are the chords:
I’m sure you’ll do a much better job than I did. I hope you have fun playing!
Love always,
Fay
xXx
P.S. I didn’t write this song, I don’t own any rights to it. Go give Jeff Lynn your money, because this album is phenomenal.